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Reports

Hunger is not and need never be inevitable. However climate change threatens to put back the fight to eradicate it by decades – and our global food system is woefully unprepared to cope with the challenge.

The 2013 elections helped to restore constitutional order in Mali and marked the start of a period of hope for peace, stability and development. The challenge is now to respond to the Malian people's desire for improved governance. The new government must, therefore, strive to ensure equitable development, increase citizen participation, in particular women's political participation, while improving access to justice and promoting reconciliation.

Wealthy elites have co-opted political power to rig the rules of the economic game, undermining democracy and creating a world where the 85 richest people own the wealth of half of the world’s population, worldwide development organisation Oxfam warns in a report published today.

Around the world, one in eight people go to bed hungry every night despite there being enough food for everyone. Overconsumption, misuse of resources and waste are common elements of a system that leaves hundreds of millions without enough to eat.

There are an estimated one million refugees from Syria living in Lebanon, with more arriving every day. As the situation in Syria continues to deteriorate, it is increasingly likely that many will remain in Lebanon for many months, if not years, to come. The Beirut Research and Innovation Center was commissioned by Oxfam to survey 260 households, representing 1,591 individuals, about their living conditions, sources of income and expenditure patterns, coping mechanisms and perceptions of life in Lebanon. The survey shows that many families are spiralling deeper into debt, living in cramped conditions, with few job prospects and dwindling hope for the future.

Private finance has a vital role to play in the global response to climate change, but it is not a substitute for public finance. COP19 in Warsaw must make commitments to scaling up public finance for adaptation, so that the world’s poorest countries and communities are not left without promised adaptation support.

The horrifying chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013 led to a flurry of diplomatic activity. This new momentum has the potential to turn into a breakthrough only if urgent and immediate action is taken on aid and efforts are made to stop the bloodshed.

This paper sets out how one crop – sugar – has been driving large-scale land acquisitions and land conflicts at the expense of small-scale food producers and their families. At least 4m hectares of land have been acquired for sugar production in 100 large-scale land deals since 2000, although given the lack of transparency around such deals, the area is likely to be much greater. In some cases, these acquisitions have been linked to human rights violations, loss of livelihoods, and hunger for small-scale food producers and their families.